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Nearly a decade ago, actor Jeremy Irons was reading “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot at an event at London’s British Library, and to his surprise, the poet’s widow, Valerie, who was then in her 80s, showed up. After the performance, he spoke to her, and she told him, in words he happily recalls today, “I think you are today’s voice for Eliot.”

Mr. Irons thinks that she may have been reacting to his straightforward approach to the reading. “I read what came to me off the page, without much intellectual study,” he says. Later, when getting ready to perform other poems by Eliot, he experimented with reading the lines with a lot of personality and acting, and then tried reading them with “nothing,” just straight off the page. He stuck with the latter. “I just try to become a voice,” he says.

Across his long film and television career, the 69-year-old actor is especially known for portraying historical or literary figures, such as Claus von Bülow in the 1990 film “Reversal of Fortune,” for which he won an Academy Award, Humbert Humbert in “Lolita” (1997), and Pope Alexander VI in the Showtime series “The Borgias” (2011-2013).

Before the reading in London years ago, Mr. Irons hadn’t read much of Eliot’s poetry. Now he has read all of Eliot’s major works, from “The Hollow Men” to “The Waste Land.” Next month, his audiobook recording “The Poems of T.S. Eliot” will be released, 75 years after the publication of Eliot’s “Four Quartets.”

That set of four poems, about the nature of time and the cycle of life, “is for me the apogee of his work,” Mr. Irons says. They reflect the struggle to get to “the still point of the turning world,” free from living in the past or the future. As Eliot writes, “The inner freedom from the practical desire, / The release from action and suffering, release from the inner / And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded / By a grace of sense…”

Mr. Irons says that he’s tried to get to his own still point by meditating occasionally, but he jokes that he more effectively gets there by smoking a cigarette on his own. “This isn’t getting as deep as I think Eliot is trying to get, but what I do is I smoke and I get out of noisy places and noisy dinners and I stand on the sidewalk or on the terrace,” he says. “I can’t bear the constant prattle of life.”

‘I’ve always thought acting was more about listening than talking,’ says Mr. Irons. Photo: Perou for The Wall Street Journal; Grooming by Tahira

Mr. Irons, who grew up on the Isle of Wight in England, trained as an actor at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. One of his first major parts was in the 1981 television series “Brideshead Revisited,” based on the book by Evelyn Waugh. Since then he has acted in many other films and television shows inspired by books, such as the 2015 dystopian drama “High-Rise,” based on a J.G. Ballard novel. “I think it’s very rare that you get a film that’s better than a book, but you can find some that are almost as good,” Mr. Irons says.

When it comes to doing historical re-enactments, he thinks the characters and plot must reflect “the attitudes and understanding of life that they had at the time,” he says. He thought it was important that “The Borgias” reflected the nature of his character, Pope Alexander VI, who is notorious for his schemes to use the papacy to expand the power of his Borgia line, as well as for his many mistresses.

“We can’t gloss stuff with our modern sensibilities, and we’re so sensitive about everything,” he says, adding that he thinks political correctness has seeped too far into modern culture. “One has to be brave about that,” he says. “It’s difficult because there’s a politically correct box waiting to break anybody.”

His new audiobook compiles readings of Eliot’s poetry that he originally did for BBC Radio. He thinks of poems and modern art the same way: Both are best understood emotionally rather than intellectually. “I know a lot of modern art goes over my head because I look at it and go, ‘It doesn’t mean anything to me.’ But sometimes you look at it and you’re just sort of gobsmacked.”

He applies a similar philosophy to acting as to reading poetry. He tries to be careful not to overact. He also aims to listen and react to the other actors in a scene. “I’ve always thought acting was more about listening than talking,” he says. He’s now starring in the London production of Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey into Night,” which will travel to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in May and then the Wallis Annenberg Center for the Performing Arts in Los Angeles in June.

In his down time, he and his wife, Sinéad Cusack, spend time at their castle in Ireland. Built in the 15th century and recently restored, it looks like it could be the setting for one of his period pieces. “I like walking, and I think Ireland suits my nature best of all and Los Angeles least of all,” he says. He spends as little time in L.A. as possible. “My instinct is not to live over the shop,” he says.

If he could pick a different era to live in, which would it be? “I think 1900 to 1912 was an extraordinary time,” he says, “and I think between the wars was a mad time and also quite fun to be around.” But he says that he’s satisfied enough with the present. “I’m happy to be healthy and alive when I am.”

Thirty years after he played Charles Ryder in the British miniseries “Brideshead Revisited,” actor Jeremy Irons takes on another TV role that involves Catholicism, opulence and distrust: Rodrigo Borgia, the scheming patriarch and corrupt Pope Alexander VI in Showtime’s “The Borgias,” premiering April 3.

Watch a scene from Showtime’s new drama ‘The Borgias.’ The series stars Jeremy Irons as Pope Alexander VI. Courtesy Showtime.

Mr. Irons, 62, is perhaps best known for film roles including Claus von Bülow in “Reversal of Fortune,” for which he won an Oscar, and Humbert Humbert in “Lolita.” He also starred in TV miniseries like the 2009 Lifetime biopic “Georgia O’Keeffe” with Joan Allen and “Elizabeth I,” with Helen Mirren.

His deep, languid voice is currently in theaters as the narrator of wildlife documentary “The Last Lions.” (He voiced the villain Scar in “The Lion King.”) In “Margin Call,” an upcoming film about the financial crisis, Mr. Irons plays an embattled Wall Street CEO based on Lehman Brothers’ Richard Fuld.

Mr. Irons was reluctant to commit to an ongoing TV series, but the nine-episode cable run and the fact that Irish director Neil Jordan (“The Crying Game”) would write and direct “The Borgias,” convinced him.

The Wall Street Journal: Why is “The Borgias” being touted as a kind of medieval version of “The Godfather”?

Mr. Irons: There’s an element in common in that Don Corleone was an Italian in America. Rodrigo is a Spaniard in Rome. Yes, that element of the manipulator and the immigrant trying to find power and how to hold onto it and influence people as the head of the family. But those parallels don’t run very deep. I think it’s sort of a marketing idea Showtime had. [Mario] Puzo wrote a novel [“The Family”] about the Borgias, of course.

You’ve said you don’t think you’re right for the role of Rodrigo. Why not?

Neil [Jordan] said “Do you want to play Rodrigo Borgia?” I got home and Googled him and I told him “Christ, you don’t want me. You need James Gandolfini.” I could think of four or five actors who would physically be right for the role. I said “I can’t play that guy.” I have an aesthetic quality that is expected from a pope, whereas this guy was a big, sweaty Spaniard with a big appetite—a lot of food, a lot of women.

So why did you change your mind?

Neil said “No, it’s all about power and how power corrupts you and how you manipulate it. No one knows what he really looked like.” So he convinced me.

Even though Rodrigo is an evil megalomaniac, there’s some humor in him. Did you bring that to it?

I think it’s all in Neil’s writing. There’s sort of a natural amusingness about the situation which one doesn’t have to play. You just do what you do and it brushes off on somebody and there’s a smile there.

Speaking of humor, why wasn’t the 1997 film version of “Lolita” you starred in funnier? The book is very funny.

That book is full of irony. I think we were so nervous about the subject when we were making it that we were walking on egg shells. We could have used a lot more irony. The Kubrick version had more irony but it missed a lot of other things.

In addition to “The Borgias,” you’ve recently done a couple of episodes of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.” How did that come about?

Well, “SVU” is a different kettle of fish. I was in Budapest finishing “The Borgias” and they asked and I said I don’t know the show. They sent me an episode with Robin Williams and one with Isabelle Huppert. I said “This is good, it’s fine. It is what it is.” For an actor it feels a little like you’ve just finished reading Proust and you think “I’m going to read a Dick Francis novel and it will take me a day and be great.”

“The Tudors” did very well for Showtime but it got criticism for being soft porn in costumes. Will “The Borgias” have as much sex and nudity?

No. There are a lot of channels doing that. I think we can do better than that. This adaptation, for example, and there have been loads, doesn’t fall into the trap of writing all these stories about incest. In those days whole families used to sleep in the same bed. It’s better to get inside characters, who they are and why they do what they do than to make it sensationalist.

You seem to regularly go from film to TV to theater. Which do you prefer?

It’s just the material. They all have good things about them and they all have bad things about them. Theater is great because you can really stay in one place and work on the character in depth over a long period. It doesn’t pay as much as movies, but is often better written. The problem with TV is people are watching soccer at the same time. I’m really lucky to hop around. I’m a jobbing actor.

How is developing a character for TV different from one for film?

The huge luxury is time. A two-hour movie—and, if you’re lucky, it’s two hours—you can tell a story but it’s hard to develop the inconsistencies of a character and have time to bring all those inconsistencies together.

Are you Catholic?

My wife is. My children are. I don’t belong to clubs.

It may shock a lot of Catholics to see a Pope who behaves like Rodrigo Borgia.

Well, the medieval mind would’ve had no problem with a pope who has a mistress. Why do you expect him to be a God? He’s not a God. He’s a man, with all the weaknesses and failures. [Today] we expect our leaders to be squeaky clean and when they turn out to be normal people with normal desires, we say this person shouldn’t be our leader. Man is just doing his best.

Have you discussed a second season with Showtime?

We have a little. Neil has talked to me about some ideas. It’s hard to get the Pope out of the Vatican. I’m very grateful Showtime was hands-off when we were shooting. They left us alone. I hope that will continue because I don’t think you can make movies or TV series by committee.